Heterarchy

Pessimism and optimism in international relations theory have reflected the dominance of state-centrism in world politics. Competing paradigms have taken for granted that the core problematics of concern the consolidation of nation-states domestically and their interaction in “inter-national” relations, seen as two-level games. Pessimism stemmed from international war, domestic vulnerability and interstate economic competition; optimism from liberal pacification, economic interdependence and global governance. However, this perception of world politics is increasingly outdated. Since the mid-to-late 20th century a dialectic of globalization and fragmentation has been leading to a complex restructuring of the system, above the state, below the state and cutting across states, from financial crisis to the “intangible economy” to security and climate change. The new pessimism—and optimism—are rooted in this transformation.

Societies are systems composed of a great number of various social institutions that interact and change, which results in that the whole structure of societies changes. This is what social evolution is – the process of structural change. Evolution does not have any particular
direction: any significant, that is, transforming change is evolutionary. Along with complexity measured in levels of political integration, societies as systems of social institutions have yet another fundamental characteristic that can be called a ‘basic principle of societal organization’. The principle of organization a society embodies depends on the way its institutions relate to one another. Specifically, two basic principles can be distinguished here: heterarchy, whereby elements are unranked or can be ranked in different ways, and its opposite – homoarchy, whereby elements in most contexts are ordered mainly according to one principal hierarchical relationship. Homoarchy and heterarchy represent most universal, ‘pure’ (generalized) principles and basic trajectories of socio-cultural organization. There are no universal evolutionary stages: cultures can be (generally) heterarchical or homoarchical and have an equal level of complexity. A culture can change its basic organizational principle without changing its current complexity level. There also exist alternatives within each of the two types. The heterarchy – homoarchy dichotomy runs throughout the whole of human history: it is observable on all levels of social complexity in all historical periods and culture areas, including the globalized world of our time. Transformations in the ways social institutions and complexes thereof, that is, societal subsystems, are ranked (either homoarchically or hetrarchically), on the one hand, and changes in culture complexity overall, on the other, are two different, largely unrelated processes. The heterarchy – homoarchy dichotomy has, to a
considerable degree, predetermined the non-linear and non-fixed nature of the global sociocultural process. An adequate understanding of human socio-cultural history does not appear possible unless one takes into consideration the possibility of alternative basic principles of
societal organization, their complementary and competitive co-existence, and their interrelated dynamics throughout human history. Also, considering this possibility enables discussion of the future of the present-day globalized world as not fixed but variable, where homoarchical and heterarchical principles may intersect in various ways and at different levels – national, international, and transnational.

Общества представляют собой системы, состоящие из большого
числа разнообразных взаимодействующих и изменяющихся социальных институтов. В результате их взаимодействия и трансформации происходит изменение структуры обществ в целом. Это и есть социальная эволюция – процесс структурного изменения. Эволюция не имеет определенного направления:  любое значимое, т.е. трансформирующее общественную структуру в любом направлении, изменение является эволюционным. Помимо степени сложности, определяемой количеством уровней политической интеграции, общества как системы социальных институтов имеют еще одну фундаментальную характеристику, которую можно назвать базовым принципом организации. То, какой принцип воплощает общество, зависит от характера взаимоотношения социальных институтов в нем. Можно выделить два базовых принципа организации обществ: гетерархический (взаимоотношение институтов, при котором они неранжированы
или обладают потенциалом для того, чтобы быть ранжированными различными способами) и гомоархический (взаимоотношение институтов, при котором они жестко ранжированы единственным образом и не обладают значительным потенциалом для того, чтобы стать неранжированными или ранжированными другими способами, по крайней мере, без кардинального изменения всего общественно-политического устройства). Гомоархия и гетерархия представляют собой наиболее универсальные «идеальные» (обобщенные) принципы и базовые траектории социокультурной организации. Не существует универсальных эволюционных стадий: общества могут быть (преимущественно) гетерархическими или гомоархическими, имея одинаковый уровень сложности. Общество может изменить базовый принцип своей организации, не переходя на иной уровень сложности. Альтернативность существует и внутри каждого из двух типов обществ. Дихотомия гетерархии и гомоархии проходит через всю историю человечества: ее можно наблюдать на всех уровнях социальной сложности во все исторические периоды и во всех географических регионах, включая глoбальный мир нашего времени. Трансформации способов ранжирования социальных институтов и их комплексов – подсистем общественной организации (гомоархического или гетерархического), с одной стороны, и изменения общего уровня социокультурной сложности – с другой, – есть два разных, в целом не связанных друг с другом процесса. Дихотомия гетерархии и гомоархии в значительной степени обусловила неоднолинейную и альтернативную сущность глобального социокультурного процесса. Адекватное понимание социокультурной истории не представляется возможным без учета альтернативности базовых принципов организации обществ, их взаимодополняющего и конкурентного существования и их взаимной динамики на всем протяжении истории человечества. Учет этого также позволяет рассматривать будущее современного глобального мира как не предопределенное, но имеющее несколько возможных сценариев, в которых гомоархический и гетерархический принципы могут по-разному соотноситься на
различных уровнях – национальном, международном и транснациональном.

This is a manuscript version of the chapter on the Heterarchical Director, published in a new edition of Director's Theatre, edited by David Bradby, David Williams and Peter Boenisch.

Focusing on the case study of Improbable Theatre’s directing tandem Phelim McDermott and Lee Simpson (and their 2017 production of Lost without Words at the National Theatre London), this essay traces a lineage of the contemporary director, rooted in the paradigm of live improvisation and facilitative directing associated with the practice of Keith Johnstone. Drawing on the notion of heterarchy as a principle of self-organisation,  I suggest that the twenty-first century director can be characterised not only by an altered approach to authorship, but also to leadership and interpersonal relationships.

The past two decades have seen an expansion of archaeological
activity on the island of Ireland that has transformed our knowledge and understanding of most periods in Irish prehistory and history. However, Iron Age sites and artefacts remain rare finds and are often ephemeral, particularly in the case of settlements. It is now clear that the peculiarly sparse record of the Irish Iron Age is genuinely representative of the surviving archaeology. It is also clear that this evidence does not fit the traditional ‘Celtic’ picture of warrior elites, druids and tribal hierarchies imported from other regions and later insular texts. This paper proposes an alternative model for the Irish Iron Age of the first millennium BC, one that centres on nomadism and heterarchy.

The cities of the Indus civilization were expansive and planned with large-scale architecture and sophisticated Bronze Age technologies. Despite these hallmarks of social complexity, the Indus lacks clear evidence for elaborate tombs, individual-aggrandizing monuments, large temples, and palaces. Its first excavators suggested that the Indus civilization was far more egalitarian than other early complex societies , and after nearly a century of investigation, clear evidence for a ruling class of managerial elites has yet to materialize. The conspicuous lack of political and economic inequality noted by Mohenjo-daro's initial excavators was basically correct. This is not because the Indus civilization was not a complex society, rather, it is because there are common assumptions about distributions of wealth, hierarchies of power, specialization, and urbanism in the past that are simply incorrect. The Indus civilization reveals that a ruling class is not a prerequisite for social complexity.

Available open-access at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-020-09147-9

"CONTENTS
Carole L. Crumley. CONTEXTUAL CONSTRAINTS ON STATE STRUCTURE
Olga Yu.Artemova. ON SOME FORMS OFHIERARCHICAL SYSTEMS
David Christian. HIERARCHY AND HETERARCHYIN WORLD HISTORY
Herbert Barry. SOCIAL BEHAVIORS ASSOCIATEDWITH HEREDITARY COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP
Garrett Cook. HETERARCHY AND HOMOARCHYIN MAYA VILLAGE POLITICS
Toon van Meijl. METAPHOR AND HIERARCHY IN MAORISOCIO-POLITICAL ORGANISATION
Timothy R. Pauketat, Thomas E. Emerson. ALTERNATIVE CIVILIZATIONS:HETERARCHIES, CORPORATEPOLITIES, AND ORTHODOXIES
Jan Bouzek. EXERTION OF POWER IN CLASSICALAND HELLENISTIC THRACE
Dmitri M. Bondarenko. BENIN KINGDOM (13TH – 19TH CENTURIES): A SUPERCOMPLEX NON-STATE SOCIETY
Leonid E. Grinin. ALTERNATIVITY OF STATE FORMATION PROCESS: THE EARLY STATE VS. STATE ANАLOGUES
Robert Zaller. DISCOURSES OF LEGITIMACY:HONOR AND AUTHORITYIN THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT OF 1626"

In this dissertation I address the timing of and interrelatedness between initial Early Formative period (2000–1500 BCE) transitions in residential mobility, subsistence, and social organization in Mesoamerica. I approach these topics using evidence from the La Consentida Archaeological Project (LCAP), a multi-season field and laboratory investigation of the site of La Consentida on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. Based on six radiocarbon dates (1947–1530 cal B.C.), La Consentida represents the earliest village site ever discovered in coastal Oaxaca, and likely in much of Pacific coastal Mexico. According to these dates, the site has produced some of the earliest ceramics and mounded earthen architecture known in Mesoamerica. In this dissertation, I argue on the basis of changes over time in earthen architecture, ground stone tools, and house construction that the community grew more sedentary over the course of site occupation. Based on studies of faunal remains, human dental pathologies, isotopic indicators, and food processing technology, I conclude that the community ate a broad diet but consumed more maize than did contemporaneous groups in other Early Formative period occupation areas, such as the Soconusco region of Chiapas and Guatemala. Culinary preferences may have changed at La Consentida, however, with a shift over time from consuming maize in beverage form to processing flour on stone mills that prompted increasing dental attrition. Anthropomorphic ceramic figurines from the site demonstrate a diversity of social roles, suggesting that the community was heterarchically complex from very early in its history. Obsidian sourcing and evidence of ceramic formal and decorative styles similar to those from other Formative period sites in West Mexico, the Valley of Oaxaca, and Central Mexico indicate La Consentida’s broad interaction sphere. The very early dates associated with ceramic vessel fragments from La Consentida may complicate current models for the adoption of ceramic technology in Mesoamerica by suggesting an early tradition developing along the western Pacific coast that was contemporaneous with the Soconusco region’s Barra phase (1900–1700 cal B.C.). These various lines of evidence demonstrate that La Consentida was a community in transformation during one of the most fundamental moments of socioeconomic change in the ancient Americas. Research at La Consentida is relevant to key archaeological debates concerning Archaic to Formative period transitions in settlement, subsistence, and social organization. Evidence from the site is beginning to support arguments for gradual adoption of sedentism, early consumption of significant quantities of maize, and the importance of heterarchical distinctions in the birth of Mesoamerican social complexity.

The organisational structure of complex Minoan societies has long been debated by archaeologists. This dissertation explores and clarifies the structure of Palaikastro during the Neopalatial period by considering how a heterarchical organisational structure may be applied. Material culture from this area and period were categorised and their distributions were mapped to achieve this end. It is determined that a heterarchical structure is more likely to have been in place than a hierarchically one, contrary to most archaeologist’s claims about the period. Suggestions for developing further insights into this topic are also detailed.

Until quite recently, cultural evolution has commonly been regarded as the permanent teleological move to a greater level of hierarchy, crowned by state formation. However, recent research, particularly those based upon the principle of heterarchy – “... the relation of elements to one another when they are unranked or when they possess the potential for being ranked in a number of different ways” (Crumley 1995: 3) changes the usual picture dramatically. The opposite of heterarchy, then, would be a condition in society in which relationships in most contexts are ordered mainly according to one principal hierarchical relationship. This organizational principle may be called “homoarchy”. Homoarchy and heterarchy represent the most universal “ideal” principles and basic trajectories of socio-cultural (including political) organization and its transformations. There are no universal evolutionary stages – band, tribe, chiefdom, state or otherwise – inasmuch as cultures so characterized could be heterarchical or homoarchical: they could be organized differently, while having an equal level of overall social complexity. However, alternativity exists not only between heterarchic and homoarchic cultures but also within each of the respective types. In particular, the present article attempts at demonstrating that the Benin Kingdom of the 13th – 19th centuries, being an explicitly homoarchic culture not inferior to early states in the level of complexity, nevertheless was not a state as it lacked administrative specialization and pronounced priority of the supra-kin ties. The Benin form of socio-political organization can be called “megacommunity,” and its structure can be depicted as four concentric circles forming an upset cone: the extended family, community, chiefdom, and megacommunity (kingdom). Thus, the homoarchic megacommunity turns out an alternative to the homoarchic by definition (Claessen and Skalnik 1978b: 640) early state.

Resumen La tradición cultural purépecha duró por lo menos 3000 años durante los cuales se produjeron importantes transformaciones sociales, políticas y económicas que culminaron en el poderoso y centralizado reino que encontraron los españoles cuando llegaron a la capital de Tzintzuntzan en 1522. A diferencia de otros estudios que han examinado por qué, cuándo y dónde ocurrieron estos cambios, el presente capítulo explica cómo tuvieron lugar, poniendo atención en dos procesos significativos de la conducta humana, la jerarquía y la heterarquía. Los estudios arqueológicos e históricos, y especialmente sus modelos de patrones de asentamiento, sistemas tributarios, mercados y estructuras de clase social, han documentado el ritmo, la distribución espacial y la naturaleza de la jerarquía en la evolución de las sociedades del centro y norte de Michoacán. Sin embargo, lo que no explican es cómo y por qué los límites étnicos se mantuvieron a través del tiempo y del espacio. En el caso de la tradición purépecha, una pregunta importante es cómo éstos mantuvieron el idioma y su identidad étnica durante milenios a pesar de haber estado rodeados por grandes poblaciones de hablantes del náhuatl y haber experimentado además migraciones de grupos de otras identidades étnicas que vinieron del norte y del este. A partir de las publicaciones etnográficas e históricas, documentaremos el papel de las relaciones heterárquicas entre individuos y comunidades en el mantenimiento de la inclusión e interacciones étnicas, las cuales constituyen un proceso importante que incluso dejó huellas detectables en el registro arqueológico. A En este capítulo la palabra purépecha se refiere a la tradición cultural y lingüística del pasado y del presente de la gente conocida comopurépecha o tarasca. El uso de la palabra " tarasco/a " se limitará al Estado político del Posclásico Tardío (ver también capítulo 3).

House societies have become popular with archaeologists in recent years, due to (among other things) their conspicuous material basis (wealth, heirlooms and the houses themselves). As yet, however, most archaeological studies have focused only on individual societies. In this article, we offer a comparative and long‐term approach to the phenomenon, using as case studies the Bronze Age and Iron Age communities of the Levant, the Aegean and the central Mediterranean. We describe the elements that define them as house societies and examine their evolution through time. We follow a strictly Lévi‐Straussian definition of the house that prevents the concept from losing heuristic power. Using this definition, we consider that houses are to be found in ranked societies without centralization and in complex agropastoral systems, like those of the Mediterranean, where agricultural soil is scarce and liable to be monopolized. We argue that the house emerges in these competitive contexts as an institution to control land and retain patrimony undivided. Through a combination of archaeological and written sources, we try to demonstrate that it is possible to document several strategies used by house societies to acquire and retain power and wealth, including dowry, levirate, a bilateral system of marriage alliances, ancestor cults, specific architectures and house treasures. The case studies addressed here offer good comparative material for assessing similar processes elsewhere. At the same time, we argue that the Mediterranean area developed a particular ideology, that of the shepherd ruler, that was essential to legitimate the house.

Aside from complexity measured in levels of political integration, societies as systems of social institutions have another fundamental characteristic that can be called a “basic principle of societal organization.” The principle of organization a society embodies depends on the way its institutions are arranged with respect to one another. Two basic principles can be distinguished: heterarchy—the relation of elements to one another when they are unranked or can be ranked in different ways (as coined by Crumley), and its opposite, homoarchy,—a condition in society in which relationships in most contexts are ordered mainly according to one principal hierarchical relationship. Homoarchy and heterarchy represent the most universal “ideal” (generalized) principles and basic trajectories of socio-cultural organization. There are no universal evolutionary stages: cultures can be (generally) heterarchical or homoarchical having an equal level of complexity. A culture can change its basic organizational principle without transition to another complexity level. Alternativeness also exists within each of the types. So, the heterarchy—homoarchy dichotomy runs throughout the whole of human history: it is observable on all levels of social complexity in all historical periods and culture areas, including the globalized world of our time. Transformations in the ways social institutions and their sets, societal subsystems, are ranked (homoarchically or hetrarchically) on the one hand and changes in the overall cultural complexity on the other are two different, largely unrelated processes.

The paper reviews the conventional notion of the straightforward relation between
the presence of warrior equipment, its quantity and quality, and the warrior status of the deceased
in the area of middle Danube by revising the evidence from Karaburma necropolis. It
is argued that the concept of the warlike late Iron Age Scordisci is derived from ancient written
accounts and that the role of war and violent character of communities in the middle Danube
region are overemphasized and uncritically taken as an axiom. The paper suggests other
possible paths of interpretation which point to the diversification of social roles, possible
professionalization within the late Iron Age social structure, as well as (probably) diverse
meanings and utilization of weaponry in the funerary context.

This contribution highlights developments towards socio-economic and political complexity in Early Dilmun society during the City I period, particularly on Bahrain. This formative phase was highly dynamic, and saw the inception of several aspects  fundamental for the developments that took place during the ‘first phase of the second social formation’ (that unfolded during City IIa and which is associated with the creation of an Early State organization). It will be argued that the main impetus for changes in Bahrain’s social fabric during City I was a combination of factional competition, a rapidly expanding and aggregating population, and the investments needed to transform the natural landscape. These changes were not restricted to a small elite, as has been maintained up till now, but seem to have affected all segments of society.

Keywords: Dilmun, Bronze Age, 4.2 ka BP event, social complexity, heterarchy.

TYPESCRIPT: I AM NOT ALLOWED BY THE PUBLISHER TO UPLOAD THE ORIGINAL PUBLICATION ONTO THIS FORUM FOR A PERIOD OF TWO YEARS.

Until recently, cultural evolution has been regarded as the teleological move to a greater level of hierarchy. Research based upon the principle of heterarchy – “... the relation of elements to one another when they are unranked or when they possess the potential for be-ing ranked in a number of different ways” (Crumley 1995:3) changes the picture. The opposite of heterarchy would be a condition in society in which relationships in most con-texts are ordered mainly according to one principal hierarchical relationship. This organiza-tional principle may be called “homoarchy”. Homoarchy and heterarchy represent the most universal “ideal” (generalized) principles and basic trajectories of socio-cultural organiza-tion. There are no universal evolutionary stages: cultures can be (generally) heterarchical or homoarchical having an equal level of complexity. A culture could change its basic organ-izational principle without transition to another complexity level. Alternativity also exists within each of the types.

Organization figures centrally in the understanding of biological systems advanced by both new mechanists and proponents of the autonomy framework. The new mechanists focus on how components of mechanisms are organized to produce a phenomenon and emphasize productive continuity between these components. The autonomy framework focuses on how the components of a biological system are organized in such a way that they contribute to the maintenance of the organisms that produce them. In this paper we analyze and compare these two accounts of organization and argue that understanding biological organisms as cohesively integrated systems benefits from insights from both. To bring together the two accounts, we focus on the notions of control and regulation as bridge concepts. We start from a characterization of biological mechanisms in terms of constraints and focus on a specific type of mechanism, control mechanisms, that operate on other mechanisms on the basis of measurements of variables in the system and its environment. Control mechanisms are characterized by their own set of constraints that enable them to sense conditions, convey signals, and effect changes on constraints in the controlled mechanism. They thereby allow living organisms to adapt to internal and external variations and to coordinate their parts in such a manner as to maintain viability. Because living organisms contain a vast number of control mechanisms, a central challenge is to understand how they are themselves organized. With the support of examples from both unicellular and multicellular systems we argue that control mechanisms are organized heterarchically, and we discuss how this type of control architecture can, without invoking top-down and centralized forms of organizations, succeed in coordinating internal activities of organisms.

Together, the concepts of heterarchy and collective action offer potential explanations for how early state societies may have established high degrees of civic coordination and sophisticated craft industries in the absence of exclusionary political strategies or dominant centralized political hierarchies. The Indus civilization (c. 2600–1900 BC) appears to have been heterarchical, which raises critical questions about how its infrastructure facilitated collective action. Digital re-visitation of early excavation reports provides a powerful means of reexamining the nuances of the resulting datasets and the old interpretations offered to explain them. In an early report on excavations at Mohenjo-daro, the Indus civilization's largest city, Ernest Mackay described a pair of small non-residential structures at a major street intersection as a 'hostel' and 'office' for the 'city fathers'. In this article, Mackay's interpretation that these structures had a public orientation is tested using a geographical information systems approach (GIS) and 3D models derived from plans and descriptions in his report. In addition to supporting aspects of Mackay's interpretation, the resulting analysis indicates that Mohenjo-daro's architecture changed through time, increasingly favouring smaller houses and public structures. Close examination of these small public structures also suggests that they may at times have been part of a single complex.

Since the earliest class-based societies, social leveling mechanisms have limited, actively as well as unconsciously, social stratification. Understanding how such power structures have operated in the past and present requires the integration of social dimensions to the political economy in a way that does not assume that elites and/or urban centers drive the course of history. Here, the Middle and Late Iron Age in southern Africa (AD 900–1650) highlight the importance of these local dynamics in tandem with broader regional changes. At a time when protoglobal trade links Africa to the Middle East and Asia, cities emerged up to 1,000 km inland along with the material evidence for hereditary inequality. Yet the population at the trade center of Bosutswe at the eastern edge of the Kalahari responded flexibly to environmental and social variables, which, perhaps unintentionally, limited the consolidation of power in the hands of the elite. The following case study of Khubu la Dintša, a small agropastoral site near Bosutswe, reminds us that, even as hegemony exists, an emphasis on the social networks that tie together local and disparate groups results in not just daily patterns of behavior but also significant social change.

The paper analyzes society as a multitude, the structure of which is a heterarchy, thus presenting society as a heterogeneous yet ordered multiplicity. This order is based on a model of the Other, organizing exterior relations which determine themselves in the process of difference and repetition. Heterarchy appears a structure (as an object) with topological properties and thus allows to recognize its differential, multiple nature. Topological model of society indicates organisation of differences in ideal objects of social processes. This paper demonstrates how social structure organises itself as a temporal sequence of topological allocation of social processes. This is achieved by pre-supposition of equivalence of (ir)reversibility of time and continuity of space. Such approach implies that fractal similitude of society is the source of its multiple order.

Shaped by technological advancements and external forces, the narratives of contemporary architecture practices shift from the celebration of the master architect to the collaborative team player in explorative enterprises. Curiously, our studio culture remains lukewarm to such disruptions. The studio pedagogical framework embedded in our design studios of how design tutors teach plays a quintessential role in shaping future architecture educational discourses. It is argued that the traditional one-on-one desk crits have limited potential for breeding new modes of cross-industry design practices. To date, the relevancies of such ubiquitous hierarchical master and apprentice teaching pedagogical structure remains unchallenged. This paper argues for a collaborative design studio characterised by collective actions and mutual support as an alternative. This research examines the repercussions of an experimental model of facilitating architecture design studios with a reinforced focus on collaboration (Collaborative Team Learning-CTL) comparing against the traditional one-on-one (OOO) studio pedagogy. CTL's pedagogical strategy situates the design tutor as an enabler, engaging students in a cross-pollinative and collaborative approach. At the end of the academic year, students were invited to complete a paper-based questionnaire to gauge their learning experience. Preliminary analysis revealed that CTL students accomplished improved academic performance, instillment of self-directed peer-to-peer learning and lower attrition compare with OOO students. This research advocates that these CTL experiences play a pivotal role in inculcating collaborative mindsets for emerging modes of architectural practices that centre on effective communications, emotional intelligence and negotiations.

Martin, Silke & Wohlfahrt, Sophia (2022). Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: heterarchische Lehrveranstaltungsformen in den Film/Ageing Studies | mit Sophia Wohlfarth. In: Uwe Fahr/Alessandra Kenner/Holger Angenent/AlexandraEßer-Lüghausen (Hrsg.): Hochschullehre erforschen! – Innovative Impulse für das Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Wiesbaden: Springer.

Since the mid-1990s, the concept of heterarchy has seen increasing use in a variety of disciplines, including the human sciences, biology, and cognitive science. This paper reviews current uses of the concept, identifying seven core themes that permeate the literature; (i) multidimensionality, (ii) multi- or poly-centricity, (iii) situational evaluation, ranking and self-reference, (iv) decentralization, or network horizontality, (v) autonomy, (vi) interdependence, and (vii) system flexibility/adaptability. However, a great deal of this literature has used heterarchy as a descriptive term, to denote some state of affairs that does not fit prevailing expectations of hierarchical systems or to classify the organization of particular social or biological systems. Certain authors within philosophy and the cognitive sciences have developed conceptual models of the processes involved within heterarchical systems, with reference to polycontextuality and synchronicity; however, these schemes remain abstract, not yet applied to specific case studies. Here, I highlight contrasts among disciplines in their to uses of the heterarchy concept and argue that, for heterarchy to hold more analytic utility, focus should shift towards discovering and outlining specific processes that lead to real-world heterarchical organizations. Such development will have to confront the fact that social and biological systems have certain fundamentally different features, meaning that cross-disciplinary engagement will be key to developing widely applicable models of heterarchy.

Se analizan las redes de tráfico de la Quebrada de Humahuaca en tiempos del “fenómeno Isla”, evaluando críticamente el
protagonismo atribuido a Tiwanaku en su organización. Con este fin se presentan las investigaciones realizadas en Muyuna
—uno de los principales sitios de la época en la Quebrada— ofreciendo información novedosa sobre contextos domésticos y
funerarios, economía y modo de vida. Un análisis bayesiano de todas las dataciones disponibles para el componente Isla lo
ubican entre fines del siglo once y comienzos del siglo catorce dC. Estos resultados, junto con el probable origen de los bienes
presentes en estos contextos, llevan a concluir que las interacciones con otras regiones de los Andes circumpuneños fueron
más importantes para los procesos de diferenciación social en las comunidades Isla que las relaciones con el estado
Tiwanaku. En este marco, cobran especial relevancia la relación con el Río Grande de San Juan y la gravitación de ciertos
colectivos supra-regionales (pastores, consumidores de alucinógenos) que podrían introducir una dimensión heterárquica en
la organización de las redes sur andinas.